Valentino Beauty

A couture house that had no active makeup line for almost its entire 60-year history, relaunched cosmetics in 2021 and hit profitability inside three years. Valentino Garavani founded the house in Rome in 1960. Its fragrance license had been held successively by Procter and Gamble, Puig, and then transferred to L'Oreal in 2018 in a multi-decade deal reportedly worth around €200 million upfront. L'Oreal's plan was simple. Restore fragrance first to rebuild couture grade brand credibility, then relaunch a full-color cosmetics range using the heritage of the Italian couture archive for packaging and shade-naming. Cosmetics is a faster-moving, higher-frequency purchase than fragrance, and the margin profile attracts every fashion house.